Our Books of Christmas

Every night during our countdown to Christmas we opened one special Christmas story. Some are serious, others religious and some are just down right silly. Our kids love books so having a new special book to unwrap and read is extra wonderful. It is also a good distraction from presents under our tree. They know that we get to unwrap one book every night until Christmas then we get to open all our presents. They are getting so excited and Sweets is actually learning about the concept of opening gifts.

 

Some of our favorites were The Grinch, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, various Nativity books, touch and feel books, search and find, The 12 Days of Christmas and Christmas Magic.

Our list will change and develop as our kids have different interests and abilities. I would love a stack of lovely illustrated books but my frugal mindset stops me from buying twelve great books at once and instead building over the years. It makes my book hunt during the year more fun.

I already bought our new book for next year and I can't wait to introduce it to the kids. I hope to continue being able to relax during the holidays so I wrapped up all our books and packed them away for next year. It might seem ridiculous to some of you but it takes stress off my plate and makes the books some what of a surprise for me too. I forget what we have or what size the books are.

Christmas Day!

Its finally Christmas morning!!

 Forget presents lets get to the good stuff!

 As siblings we all got together to get my Dad a fancy new saw. Bee was so kind and helpful when it came to opening it.

 

Traditionally my Dad passes out the presents that are under the tree. This year he had a special helper as his delivery man. Bee was so funny while opening gifts. He is quite orderly and doesn't like to make messes. Seriously, I have to give him permission to make a mess without cleaning it up. He would rip off a piece of paper and immediately he needed to throw it out. It matter how big or small the piece was. Once the paper was dealt with then he got excited for the gift he received.

 

Baking set! Sweets was adamant about carrying her new tools in one hand.

We have a girly girl in our little family. Her Grandma bought her sparkly shoes and she immediately had to put them on. PJ's and all. At least she owns her own style.

What goofs we have!

We had such a great morning playing with our new toys and spending time with our family.

We played so hard that we collapsed for nap time!

 



Sweets was lucky enough to get some special time with her Great Grandma Hudson. Grandma took her for a ride on her walker and read her lots of stories. They are so cute together.

 

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

 

First Day Of Christmas

We spent Christmas Eve at the Rangers. The Rangers open family gifts on Christmas Eve and Santa comes on Christmas morning. It works out so nicely for us so that we can open gifts with the kids at both of our parents homes.

We ended the night off by opening our Christmas Eve box and finding our new Christmas Jams and reading our last Christmas book.

 

 

 

Second Day Of Christmas

The true meaning of Christmas is love and service. What better place to celebrate Christ's birth than at the temple. We dropped our kids off at Jason's parents and headed to the temple to serve some of Jason's relatives. It was the perfect escape from the craze of Christmas. It was nice to be in a place where all the hustle and bustle just melted away. I hope that we can make our temple trip during Christmas holidays annual tradition.

We ended our night off with pictures in front of our Christmas Jammies!

 

 

 

I have finally decided to try some new techniques with my pictures.

Hopefully this year brings more improvements!

Third Day of Christmas

We made a quick trip to visit Santa! Both kids weren't super excited to see him and were a little confused at why we were taking a picture with a stranger. I can't blame them for that either.

 

Ps. Santa is Jason's Great Uncle Wayne.

For as many years as I can remember I have gone to a live Nativity. Now we go as our little family. It is really wonderful that we can have a visual representation of Christ's birth. Our kids especially love that they have sheep. We had almost the perfect weather too. It was a little chilly (-10) but we didn't freeze like we have in previous years.

 

 

Bee kept telling us that he was hiding from the cold. What a smart kid!

 

Afterwards we went and got Apple Cider and drove around looking at Christmas lights. There were some beautiful displays. Some houses went all out and had lights synced with music. The kids had a blast. They have the best expressions. Lots of "oohs and awe's" with some "wow's" thrown in. Sometimes these munchkins even clapped. Sweets fell asleep but Bee stayed awake for our whole adventure.